Friday, October 22, 2010

Syracuse? Master of Arts program in Documentary Film and History? MAYBE!

I find this to be an interesting possibility for the future:

If you are a history major or are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in history or another humanity or social science, we have a degree program that may interest you.  Syracuse University offers a one-year Master of Arts program in Documentary Film and History.  This program teaches film production while requiring students to focus on an area of specialization like history, education, religion, African-American or women’s studies.  To put it simply, students in our program learn how to research, write and design non-fiction films as well as make them.


The program is a joint effort between the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.  It begins in the summer with two courses introducing students both to production and historical analysis.  Our curriculum contains a wide variety of courses, from historical methods to video editing. However, the core of the program is the research, scripting and production of a thesis and an internship in the second summer. Past internships have been with award-winning filmmakers like Ken Burns and Barbara Kopple, as well with organizations as diverse Al Jazeera and MTV.


Our graduates are working in production companies across the US and abroad, producing media for public and cable television, museums, school districts and universities. Some of our graduates are planning to become professors who will use their media skills to become more effective teachers as well as to “publish” films instead of textbooks.


Additional information is available on our website but I also invite you to contact me via email (rlbreyer@syr.edu) for further details.

Class Registration

Class registration at Temple University is usually a pretty big deal.  It is also usually a pretty big disaster.  There are an allotted number of days when various students with various credit hours are allowed to sign up for their classes.  Seniors usually have first pick and Freshman have last pick.  At midnight on the day of your allotted registration time, everyone signs into OwlNet at exactly the same time, causing the site to crash and delays to occur.  I'm usually awake at midnight though so that's not a big deal.  However, when you are studying abroad and midnight in the states occurs at 5am London time, things get pretty bad...

BUT we made the best of it.  The night before, I developed a series of potential schedules that might suit me best, made sure I knew their CRN numbers and made sure I knew which classes needed to be booked first.  At 4:55am when all 3 of room 1C's alarms went off, we turned the stupid situation into a registration party!  From 5am-5:15am, the roommates and I danced in our beds to 90s rap and occasionally screamed expletives at our computers when the page refused to load for the billionth time.

Yet despite those 15 minutes of frustration, I eventually got through to OwlNet and registered for EVERY CLASS I WANTED!  Boo yah!  And I have a schedule that is jam packed and good for the possibility of me acquiring a job.


My Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty busy, and my classes are spread throughout the Main campus and Center City campus.  This way Mondays, Wednesays, Fridays, and the weekend are open to possible job shifts (that is my next project: operation find a job!)

I am taking 5 classes for a total of 17 credit hours. 
FILM: Digital Animation/Composition, Media Writing 1
SOCIOLOGY: Ethnicity and the American Experience
WOMEN'S STUDIES:  Gender in America
PSYCHOLOGY: Human Sexuality

The sociology and women's studies classes fulfill my General Education requirements, upon completion of them I will be done with GenEd core curriculum (they also sound really interesting).  The film classes put me on the General Studies thesis track (I am so excited for these classes!!!!!!).  The psychology class is just for fun, but also a requirement for my overall graduation track.

I'm thinking of trying to pursue and art minor, though a bit late in the game.  I'm going to try and see an advisor in person about it because when I tried going through all the email and phone channels this summer, I was met with a dead end.  Hopefully I can crank out an art minor during a summer session and throughout Senior year.  If I like my Digital Animation class, I might consider grad school for animation.  THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!  All I really know is that the thought of me graduating in 2 years makes me ridiculously sad and scared.  I want to be a student forever.

Monday, October 18, 2010

LONDON: Days 42-47

I HAVE BEEN REALLY LAZY ABOUT BLOGGING LATELY.




Some things that have been happening this week:
1. On Wednesday my Creativity and Innovation class went on a pottery painting expedition.  It was so fun and reminiscent of my Doin' Dishes birthday parties.  I painted a mug which I plan on using back at the flat as soon as it gets out of the kiln!
2.  Our entire Temple group went to a rugby game!  Rugby is extremely bizarre and was probably invented by J.K. Rowling.  The first time I had even heard of it was when I was 10 and watching Rocket Power and my silly American brain just could not understand any of the concepts for point scoring or rule breaking.  I don't even know what the name of the team was that we were supposed to be rooting for..The Hoxton Harlequins or something like that?  The experience itself was really fun, though short.  The game only lasted about an hour and 50 minutes but afterward there was a hilarious cover band dance party at the stadium bar.  And after THAT we got to play on the rugby field.
3.  Mercedes came for a visit!  It was really fun.  We ate a lot and laughed and walked around London and just enjoyed everyone's company.
4. Went to a bar/venue called Hootananny in Brixton!  It was pretty great.  Good live music, good DJed music, good people to talk to etc.  AND OH MY GOD THERE WAS A TACO TRUCK IN THEIR FRONT YARD (I say yard because the building is actually a converted mansion and it has a front yard with picnic tables for people to hang out and eat £1 tacos)!!  It is a bit far away though...
5. Went to the neighborhood Angel to eat tapas.  Unfortunately, it was not the best meal though :(
6.  ADAM VISITS IN 4 DAYS!!!!!  AND I'M GOING TO PARIS IN 8 DAYS!!!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

AMSTERDAM TRIP!











AMSTERDAM!  This was my first trip abroad while abroad.  I love going to new places!  I love visiting familiar places, but it is just so exciting to add a new place to your list of travels and a new stamp to your passport book.   I went with Caitlin, Christine, and Lauren.   We had FABULOUS weather which only complimented the adorable European cuteness of the city (which was tiny by the way!).  The city is actually laid out like a spiderweb with a bunch of pretty canals.  And bikes were EVERYWHERE!  Seriously, I kept referring to bike parking spots as "bicycle graveyards" because there were just so many of them looking so haunted and alone, begging to be stolen.  My Philadelphia bike brain couldn't handle the hundreds of thousands of cruisers that weren't even locked up most of the time!  I guess no one steals bikes in Amsterdam.  The other strange thing was that babies were in bikes everywhere!  RIDING WITHOUT SEATBELTS!  IN TINY LITTLE BIKE SEATS OR CARTS! NOT WEARING HELMUTS!  I was very concerned for their safety.

Our hostel situation wasn't ideal.  There were some complications about booking, which resulted in us all being separated int different 8 person rooms.  Unfortunately, I was the only girl in a room of 7 guys.  I was only in there to sleep, so it wasn't entirely terrible.  But it definitely made things like getting dressed and showering awkward.  I ended up using other people's bathrooms instead of using my own.  But overall the atmosphere was hospitable and there was a cat named Lola that wandered the halls (and even got locked in my room the first night!  Oops!) and we had free breakfast every morning.

FRIDAY
-Or flight got in a little late
-We attempted to get our bearings and ate cheese toasties

SATURDAY
-Walked about 8 miles
-Went to the Anne Frank House
-Went to the Van Gogh museum (a little dissapointing...)
-ate ridiculous amounts of food (french fries, Dutch pancakes, street hot dogs, coffee etc.)
-Sat along the canal
-Unsuccesfully attempted to meet up with flat mates (difficult without cellphones or internet access)
-Browsed the red light district at night (super creepy, and I consider myself liberal about that kind of stuff...)

SUNDAY
-People watched in Dam Square (the palace was unfortunately covered in scaffolding)
-Ate my weight in Stroopwaffles
-Explored different areas of town
-Sat in the park across from our hostel for 3 hours and relaxed
-Took a communal nap on the floor of Caitlin's room
-Midnight falafels

It was overall a great trip.  Probably the only time I will ever go there.  It's such a small city, I'm pretty sure I did everything I was supposed.  Maybe again one day when I'm older...but Amsterdam is no Paris.  I can visit Paris 1 billion times and never get sick of it.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

LONDON: Days 31-32

BEST WEEKEND EVER!
 
SATURDAY
STONEHENDGE
Seriously, so good.  It started at 6:45am Saturday morning, which is when my alarm went off so I could get ready for our organized trip to Stonehendge and Bath.  The bus was incredibly comfortable, so I took a lot of naps while en route.  Stonehendge was exciting because it was like seeing a celebrity.  You kind of just grow up always hearing about it or seeing images of it, plus it's featured in almost every alien movie ever.  So it was pretty exciting to see it in person.  Unfortunately, you're not allowed to go anywhere near it.  But it was okay.  The coolest thing about it is that it's supposed to be an area full of magic!  The druids would pray there during the solstice/equinox holidays and so it's considered to be a kind of holy ground.  The grass was practically covered in glitter because there was so much dew and there were hundreds of huge black crows perched on top of the stones.  The crows would fly away and back again in huge swells.  It was pretty magical to watch.  For the most part though we just made asses of ourselves by taking ridiciulously posed pictures or naming the rocks in the structure (Rocky, Rocky Balboa, Rocky Horror, Pebbles, Vitamin etc.)  And I was almost hit by a bus in the parking lot.  My instincts are actually stupid though, so when the bus started driving towards me and everyone was screaming for me to get out of the way I just ran in a circle in front of the bus instead of running away.  Everyone laughed at me, hahaha :)  We were there for about an hour and half before we left for our trip to Bath....






BATH
Bath was soooo pretty!  It was very small and adorable.  We walked in pretty much every direction we could and would always end up back where we started.  We went to the Roman Bath museum, which I didn't really like.  The tour was kind of boring and I felt the museum did not preserve the authenticity of the Baths themselves.  At the end of the tour you're given the option of drinking from the mineral spring.  I thought it was just a stupid gimmick and that the water was just tap water coming from a fancy fountain, but that water was lefitamately from the spring and it tasted like warm water that was used previously for boiling eggs.  GROSS!  SO GROSS!  I took 1 sip and ran away.  Bath is also 1000x cheaper than London.  We ate lunch at a pub and all had really filling and delcious meals for about £5 or less.



The night after Bath was also really fun.  It was just a huge group of fun people hanging out in the basement and bonding while writing a ridiculous script for a ridiculous movie.


SUNDAY
For the most part Sunday was a lazy day, but the girls of the FIE program really wanted to bond so we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Piccadilly Circus called Chiquito.  I got a chicken chimichanga and it was SO DELICIOUS!  But I ate way too much and felt sick.  But it was indeed a lovely bonding experience with all the ladies.  I'm really happy that we're all here at the same time.  I really lucked out with this semester. 



GAH!  I cannot believe I have already been in London for 1 month!  I cannot believe I am going to be seeing Adam in 3 weeks!